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A 'Mobility' dating app features on a phone, where you can swipe across on an image of an electric scooter or a white cane.

Five mobility aids our community are obsessed with

By Siobhan Rosenthal By Marlo Schorr-Kon

Mobility aids are visual cues to strangers of our impairments, but they're also essential to helping us get through the day with dignity. Here's some that we love and why.

  • Five mobility aids our community are obsessed with
    Community contributors
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  • Amy Clements: An ice cream-grabbing walking cane 

    When I first started using my walking cane at the age of 16, I quickly became obsessed. Gone were the days of arm pain and bruised palms caused by crutches. I could go out more, walking further than ever with less pain. I also realised that despite my vertically challenged stature, I could now access the contents of the top shelves (read: ice cream) at the supermarket. How did a cane achieve that, you ask? By holding the bottom of the walking cane and using the handle as a hook, I could pull the item into my awaiting grasp. My walking cane is a life-changer.

Image description: A black walking cane is on the green grass

  • A photo of Amy's walking stick

  • Matakorama Waipouri: My confidence-boosting walking frame

    I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the different walking frames throughout my life. I used to think it was a disadvantage because it would get stuck going places. I remember playing with my friends once at primary school and I suddenly stopped - the wheel was stuck in a drain! But my friends helped me out. I used to feel embarrassed as a teenager using a walking frame, but once I got an upgraded one that was a teal colour with a seat, it gave me so much more confidence - everyone knew me for my bright walking frame. Having a seat was also helpful because it gave me a place to put my stuff when I was waiting for my taxis after school. I started loving my walking frame when I took it to sports events like the Halberg Games. A few years ago, I was doing the 100 metre sprint. After the first 50 metres, I ended up ditching my frame because it gave me the extra confidence and boost I needed to walk the rest of the way myself.

Image description: A composite of two images of Matakorama smiling and posing at the camera with her teal walking frame.

  • Matakorama and her walking frame

  • Siobhan Rosenthal: My dreamy electric scooter

    Yes, that’s my scooter. Well, more like my breath. 
    It brings me alive, pours speed into me again, a warm wind 
    on a cold morning where the frost hits its wheels 
    the same way snow kisses skis, a slithering river of fun 
    down the slopes of a mountain that is not yet formed 
    but I know in my dreams - where I balance best these days. 
    Awake, and the scooter is steady enough for us both.  
    The magic carpet that gets me out of the closed house door.  
    That’s not all. Some nights it is my broomstick, 
    powered, I dream, by the light of the moon.

Image description: A black and yellow electric scooter is sat on a concrete path with green plants in the background.

  • A photo of Siobhan's electric scooter

  • Marlo Schorr-Kon: A rolling muso's decked out wheels

    I got my scooter a couple of years ago when I was starting university. It has made it so much easier for me to get public transport in Auckland and has honestly been life changing. Last year for Christmas I got given a bunch of waterproof band logo stickers. I went over to my friend's house the day I got them and we put them all over the scooter. I like to tell people who ask if they can have a go on the scooter to name a song from every band whose sticker I have. Haven't had a single person do it yet!

Image description: A black and blue mobility scooter is covered in band stickers. 

  • A photo of Marlo's mobility scooter

  • Ashe Black: My new white cane that won't pinch fingers

    I live with Septo-Optic Dysplasia and one aspect of my disability is that I’m visually impaired. My favourite disability aid is my brand new white cane; I’ve had my old cane since I was 14 years old (I’m now 26!) and my new cane feels amazing to use! It’s bigger in size to fit my height as a grown adult and the rolling ball on the end works perfectly for my travel needs, but the thing that surprised me most was how much nicer the cane connects to itself when you unravel it. White canes have four points that can be pulled apart and folded for easy storage, and I didn't even fully realise I avoided manually unravelling it over letting it snap together on its own out of nerves of it catching my fingers until I got my new cane, the rounded magnetics feel a lot safer! I’m not much of a fitness person but this cane definitely has me itching to go on long walks to put it to bigger use!

Image description: A bird's eye view of someone using a white cane along a concrete footpath. 

  • A photo of Ashe's white cane

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